to rub hands together
9
2.0
- phrasal verb
:
frotar las manos
- Chili stares straight ahead, rubs his hands together, and tries to stay warm.
- rub hands together
- rub hands together briskly
- rub hands together to warm
Examples
-
"There you are," Field answered, "there you are!" He rubbed his hands together in anticipation.
Fiction book (1990) -
OK, you're going to rub your hands together until that aglet comes out the other side.
-
Just do me a favor, rub your hands together for a second and you feel your hands getting warm.
-
Like we'll literally rub our hands together and be thinking, OK, bring it on to X.
-
"We can stop at this point," he said, rubbing his hands together.
Fiction book (1994) -
And then he starts rubbing his hands together and he says with a big smile on his face, a little Scotch.
-
"Yes, you are," Thoris assured his friend, rubbing his hands together.
Fiction book (1992) -
"Dumont's expression had changed, and he rubbed his hands together happily."
Fiction book (1992) -
I whistled softly and rubbed my hands together to assure myself this was reality.
Fiction book (1993) -
To keep warm on a chilly day, he rubbed his hands together vigorously.
Synonyms
600
1.0
To move your hand over something with pressure to clean, warm, or ease an itch
3
3.3
Move hands quickly over each other to show excitement or pleasure
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly derivable from combining 'rub' (apply repeated motion), 'hands' (the body parts), and 'together' (in contact): rubbing one's hands together literally describes moving the hands against each other, often to warm them. This is a concrete, cross-linguistically common physical action, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words would readily understand it.
Etymology
Rub hands together comes from the simple action: the verb rub and the noun hands mean moving your hands together quickly to make heat. People do this to get warm, so it means 'to warm your hands'.